Vocal Blog – all about vocal and A cappella music

by Nate George, David Michael Loucks, Stephen Saxon, Tom Keyes, Deke Sharon, Willy Eteson and Florian Städtler

On February 7, a remarkable thread emerged out of Facebook, a real-time discussion  by a bunch of a cappella activists. This online debate, which was exciting to be part of, happened after Nate George, baritone for Red Harmony, a Los Angeles based, 6-person vocal group updated his facebook status with a comment on the image the US TV show “The Sing-Off” created in the US public.  What followed was a highly interesting discussion of experts offering views from inside the business and a lot of general a cappella insight.

So this time I will radically break the rule of “Don’t write more than one page in a blog”: This post is quite long, but worth reading if you care for vocal music. And the debate is not an exclusively US American issue. Many thoughts, especially on the image a cappella music holds in public apply to the European music scene as well.

Participants:

Nate George wishes ‘collegiate a cappella’ was not the face of the a cappella music scene, in pop culture. What about the many professional vocal groups that tour around the world? There, I said it, don’t chastise me!

David Michael Loucks You and me both, bro. Sad state of affairs. Thanks for nothing, sing off.

Stephen Saxon Is it worse to be misrepresented or to be ignored completely? I don’t have an answer, but perhaps a foot in the door is better than a closed one.

Nate George No disrespect to collegiate groups, some really do a good job, but they often don’t have the resources or the musical training to pull off industry standard recordings or entertaining live performances. As they are the ‘face’ of the genre, it gives the genre an amateur stigma, thus limiting the kinds of audiences that come to the concerts and buy the recordings. Mehr…